Bible Text: Jonah 1:2 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |

Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me. Jonah 1:2

According to demographic experts the growth of population is taking place in the cities, where the burgeoning population already overtaxes the job market and the housing. The result: hundreds of thousands of people living in squatters’ shacks and other improvised housing, with electricity being bootlegged from power lines and poor sanitation and health standards. Yet the fact of life remains, more and more people, the world over, are heading for the city.

Do you ever wonder how God views some of the developments of our day? Say, for example, the great cities of the world, such as Hong Kong, Beijing, London, New York, and Mexico City. Is God really concerned with issues such as urban sprawl, expanding birth rates and shrinking death rates? Is He interested in the fact that 50% of the world goes to bed hungry every night? Does it really matter to Him that 90% of the world’s population lives in 5% of the earth’s area?

In answering questions like the ones I have just posed, you have to go beyond the “C” for city in a concordance or a Bible dictionary. You have to go to the historical record of the Old Testament to determine just how interested God is in cities. In the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, we read how God was willing to listen to Abraham’s plea to spare the wicked city of Sodom if there were but a few righteous people there. We also note God’s concern for the ancient city of Nineveh where some 600,000 people lived. God sent Jonah to plead with that city, to repent lest the 120,000 children who were too young to know their right hand from their left were destroyed with it.

Cities figured largely in the ministry of Jesus, too: Bethlehem, where He was born; Nazareth where He grew up; Capernaum, the hub of His Galilean ministry; Jerusalem, where He gave His life and rose again! Jesus also recognized that cities take on a certain nature and character. For example, He cursed Chorazin and Bethsaida, saying that if the miracles which were done there had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago. He also rebuked Capernaum, saying that it would descend to Hades in judgment.

Who would deny that cities do take on certain personalities? For example, whether they like it or not, San Francisco and Copenhagen have gained a reputation for their loose morals. Other cities are known for their austere hard-dealing merchants. Cities like Monte Carlo and Las Vegas are known as “playground” cities.

In the final analysis, cities are people, and people tend to be influenced by the people about them. Lot’s pleading fell on deaf ears, and though he took his daughters out of wicked Sodom, he couldn’t remove all of the influence of Sodom by taking them out of the city. So be sure, a city does influence you and your children.

A final thought about that initial question: How does God look at cities? God looks beyond the skyline of a city and sees the hearts of the men and women who live in cities. He sees families and individuals. Families such as the Joneses, the Smiths and the Wus. He knows you for what you are, but be sure cities have to figure in the concern of our heavenly Father because cities are people.

Resource reading: Jonah 1-2